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Winterdance
A Glacier - Morrowseer Grimdark Ship, by Kittyluvver and Matau99 collaborating! WARNING: violent content. May not be appropriate for younger readers. Glacier Candelight flickered off of the shimmering, iridescent halls of the Palace of Ice. Shimmering silver glaze ice glistened on the balustrades, encrusting cool white marble like a pallor of chiseled glass. Glittering tendrils of frost twined their way up the palace walls, sweeping, circling, tracing cold curliques and graceful arabesques. It was cold - bitterly so. But here, the wind was singing. Its cold voice shivered through the ice, through the cold marble pure and clean. The wind sang the song of loneliness, the song of the frozen north. The song of the tundra, the ice-locked seas, the silver snow beneath the rim of the silent winter sky. '' ''Two graceful paws rested on the balcony of the highest turret of the Palace of Ice, two slender paws tipped with deadly knife-sharp serrated claws. Two eyes, shimmering with the light of shallow, sunlit pools and yet dark and blue as the deepest ocean, peered out over the snow-clad peaks. The wind sighed, whistling as it ran through a mane of sharp needlelike horns, tracing the languid folds of her wings and circling to the very tip of her spiked tail, coiled on the floor next to her. In another life, Glacier might have been beautiful. Her slender silhouette, the graceful curve of her wings, the delicate arch of her brow - they all might have been alluring on another dragoness. A dragoness who was not queen. There was something about Glacier's beauty that was hardened and fierce, like the soft seawater of autumn that had solidified into deadly, piercing shards of winter ice. Years of battle, years of blood, had rendered her face with a chilling ferocity. She was glorious, dangerous. Here was a dragoness who had murdered her own mother to ascend to the throne. Here was a dragoness who had slaughtered her own daughters to keep it. Queen Glacier tilted her head, listening. A cold smile lifted the corner of her mouth as the wind sang the song of her kingdom. Morrowseer Crimson dappled the floor, crimson in rivulets, crimson pooling in deep, dark puddles. Crimson speckled black scales, looking for all the world as if someone had scattered rose petals across the floor and across the dark body laying in the center of the shadowy room. Only rose petals did not smell of copper and ice. They did not reek of the sickly sweet scent of death. Morrowseer looked down at the NightWing's flayed corpse, and heard his own blood singing in his ears. Empty sockets stared upwards at him, empty voids in the skull still weeping crimson blood, even with the living eyes that had once occupied them wrenched out. The ghastly twin cavities yawned at him, brimming with half-congealed blood, so black and dark that he felt that they might suck him in. Morrowseer stared at the atrocity before him, and felt a heavy, sickening rage boil up like bile from the bit of his stomach. "What happened here?" he demanded, his voice low and dangerous, breaking the ringing silence that had descended over the shadowy room. The torches flickered, as a chill spread icy wings through the room. "It was those Moons-forsaken IceWings," gasped a NightWing female, stumbling feebly forwards so that she was silhouetted in the dim torchlight. She was attended by two NightWing healers, who were supporting her almost bodily by either side. She too bore the marks of recent battle - a long, ragged laceration marred the membrane of her left wing, and the tender skin of her underbelly was striped with no less than five slashes that were still weeping copious amonts of scarlet blood. But most horrific of all were the jagged words that had been carved into the flesh on the side of her neck. DIE FILTHY LITTLE NIGHTWING Morrowseer felt the hateful words searing his eyes, branding themselves black and bloody onto the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind. Subconsciously he dug his claws against the cold stone of the floor, imagining he was sinking his claws into the dragon who inflicted these horrors upon his tribe. The NightWing female's voice grew stronger as she recounted her story. "Our orders were to spy on a squadron of Blaze's forces, camped near the stretch of rock between the Ice and Sand Kingdoms," she hissed. "But me and Timekeeper here," she gestured at the defiled corpse, "we were ambushed. They'd known we were coming, because the moment we reached the rocks we were attacked from all sides by a battalion of IceWings." She closed her eyes and shuddered, her chest rising and falling rapidly. "We were completely outnumbered... They got Timekeeper first." Tears were streaming down her face, and her voice was rising hysterically. "They were monsters... they tore out his eyes first and let him scream for a while. When they finally killed him... it was a mercy." She hiccuped, her voice fading to a whisper. "Then..." Her voice faded, her eyes brimming with bitter tears as she made a feeble, spastic gesture at the words etched into her hide. Morrowseer nodded. "Thank you," he told her gently but firmly. "For recounting your story. I know this was not easy for you. Please go now, and rest." He turned to the healers flanking her. "Ensure that she is well tended-to." Rage boiled and seethed in the pit of his stomach as he watched the huddled, stumbling dragoness being guided away towards the door. She was scarred for life - perhaps the wounds would heal with time, but the insidious words would never fade from her skin. She would be forever marked, branded, bearing a vivid, horrid reminder of the IceWing's hatred for her tribe on her own flesh. The healers nodded, and began to help the NightWing female out of the room. Morrowseer beckoned to one, holding him back for a moment. "Please take her out through the back tunnels," he told the healer. "And cover her wounds as soon as you can. Those words on her neck... If she's seen..." He let the unspoken implications dangle in the air, heavy and somber. There will be a panic. Fear. Anger. Hate. A baying mob on the Queen's doorstep within a matter of hours. '' The healer nodded his tacit understanding, and withdrew with the rest of the group. The door of the chamber creaked shut with a thud and a sense of finality, and Morrowseer was left alone with the bloody corpse of Timekeeper. Morbidly, Morrowseer wondered what the IceWings had done with his eyes. He circled the gruesome corpse a few times, stepping carefully to avoid the slick pools of rapidly congealing blood. He knew that he should be elsewhere, attending to the altercations of this macabre incident, and yet he did not leave. The eyeless sockets of the defiled body held him in thrall. Making a few more circuits, he studied the corpse from every angle with a critical eye. There! What was that? A flash of white caught his eye, gleaming from within the bloody remains of Timekeeper's mouth. Walking forwards, wincing as cold, viscous blood seeped around his feet, he positioned himself carefully. Morrowseer seized Timekeeper's lower jaw and tried to pry it open - difficult work, as the muscles of the NightWing's jaw had clenched and locked in rigor mortis. Morrowseer braced himself and pulled again, digging his claws in with all his strength as he tried to lever Timekeeper's maw open. There was the crack of bone, the creak of tearing flesh, and Timekeeper's mouth gaped open. Somehow, even with empty eye sockets, the corpse managed a somewhat surprised expression. Hesitantly, Morrowseer peered down Timekeeper's throat - and was greeted by the gleaming white shapes of the two missing eyeballs. Morrowseer backed away, feeling sick to his very soul. Glacier ''"Your majesty! Queen Glacier!" Glacier turned from the throne room balcony, as a harried IceWing messenger winged his way towards her across the palace battlements. Ten wingbeats away, the messenger landed and bowed deeply, so low that his forehead skimmed the frosty marble of the palace floor. "Stand," she commanded softly. "What news, Messenger Iceblink?" The messenger straightened up, and Glacier saw that even though he stood rigidly at attention, he was breathing very hard indeed. He had evidently flown a great distance, at great speed. ''It must be something truly urgent, ''she thought to herself. "There's been another attack," the messenger announced. "Three IceWing victims." He grimaced involuntarily, then caught himself. "The patrol is on its way to the throne room to report as we speak. But Your Majesty," he gulped. "I must warn you... it's not a pretty sight." Glacier drew herself up. "Queenship is not pretty, Iceblink," she intoned, her level gaze suddenly as frigid as the Arctic wind. The temperature in the room seemed to drop by several degrees, and the voice of the wind sang a dirge, rather than an aria. "And I have seen and done a great deal during the years of my reign. I can assure you that, however ugly the sight is, I will be more than a match for it." The messenger lowered his head and bowed again, chastised. "Of course, Your Majesty. I apologize." Glacier blinked but lifted her chin, making no motion to accept Iceblink's apology. But she did not have time to act further, as at that moment the great ice doors to the throne room swung open once more, admitting a very haggard and bloodied group of IceWing soldiers. And even Glacier, who had slit her own mother's throat, who had snapped the necks of two of her daughters and let their blood spill onto the steps of this very throne room, took a few steps back. The IceWing male leading the troupe was hobbling along, being half-carried by two of his companions. He seemed to be alright at first, albeit croaking with pain, blood seeping from the corners of his mouth. Then, as they turned to bow, Glacier saw the true horror of his wounds. The entire back half of his body had been cut nearly entirely off at the base of his stomach. His tail, his hindlegs, his pelvis were being carried along behind him, shouldered by another pair of burly IceWing guards. The only things that connected the front half of his body to the back, that prevented him from truly being sawed in two, were his shattered spine and a few shreds of torn flesh and skin. '' ''His belly sagged, gaping open, like an enormous bloody mouth. His organs, his viscera, his bones were visible clear as day from within the ragged rent in his stomach. As the ragged troupe drew nearer to Glacier's throne what looked like a coil of his entrails fell out of his body and trailed on the floor, unraveling, growing longer and longer as his bearers trudged forwards, leaving a gruesome trail of blood and viscera in their wake. Blood gushed across the floor of the Palace of Ice, blood that was quickly freezing red and black as its heat met the icy chill of the marble palace floor. Steam wafted through the air, steam that was hot and heady with the copper scent of blood, steam that made it hard to breathe. And, through some horrific miracle, the dragon was still alive. He didn't scream. He didn't make a sound as blood trickled out of his mouth and his intestines spilled onto the frozen ground below. He only looked at Glacier through glassy, limmed eyes already glazed with the pallor of death. He said nothing, and yet Glacier understood. "Iceblink," she called, beckoning him forwards and pointing a single long white talon at the dismembered, mutilated IceWing. And Iceblink, drawing his saber, advanced on his fallen companion. With one long stroke, one graceful arc of his blade, the IceWing's head came free and rolled across the floor of the throne room, finally coming to rest before Glacier's feet. For Glacier was a good and merciful queen. Category:Fanfictions Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon) Category:Content (Kittyluvver) Category:Genre (Romance) Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete) Category:Collaborations Category:Content (Matau99)